We're in the final week of the Downcrawl campaign! I wanted to cross-post a fun update from the Downcrawl Digest blog about Downcrawl Worlds, the standalone worldbuilding game you can play with the Downcrawl Deck cards. A couple quick updates before we get there:
The campaign ends this Friday! If you haven't backed yet, don't miss your chance to reserve a copy of Downcrawl 2E.
(The final moment is in theory Friday at 5:00pm PT, but I've turned on a BackerKit thing called "Overtime Mode" which will keep the campaign open as long as new pledges keep coming in at a steady clip. A stress amplification machine? Clever marketing technique? Swiftly-ending exercise in humiliation? We'll find out.)
I appeared on "How Books Are Made" (a podcast about the art and science of making books) to talk about what it takes to crowdfund, market, and self-publish an indie book. We had a lovely conversation about what I've learned running five crowdfunding campaigns, including for my prior books 50 Years of Text Games and Subcutanean, as well as a bit about Downcrawl 2E... definitely worth a listen if you're interested in how this kind of thing all comes together!
Thanks to feedback from some lovely backers, I've released some updates over the past few weeks to the early rules draft available to anyone who backs the project. These are mostly typo fixes and broken links, but there have been a few rules clarifications and minor tweaks to systems as a result of this feedback (which is much appreciated!)
Thanks for following the project, and read on for a sneak peak at Downcrawl Worlds, which will be a great game to bust out on a game night where not everyone can make it or you want something a bit less crunchy than usual!
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Today I wanted to talk about Downcrawl Worlds, which is a whole second game you can play with your Downcrawl Deck cards.
Worlds emerged after I had good test proofs of the card deck, but was having trouble finding a satisfying way to quickly playtest with it at conventions. The idea finally struck me: what if there was a whole separate game you could play with just the cards, without the whole Downcrawl 2E rulebook?
What emerged was a fast-paced worldbuilding game about inventing strange, inspired ideas together. A game you could use to generate a campaign world for Downcrawl, or as a fun standalone evening of creativity. A game where you could invent something called the Godslime and explore how it survived through the Age of Sacred Shadows…
A Downcrawl Worlds game in progress. Yes, the Godslime was “oozy, but tasteful.”
In Downcrawl Worlds, you take turns proposing new elements of a weird, wondrous underworld you’re inventing from scratch. The current player chooses a turn type and plays one prompt word from their hand. For instance, if you’re playing the Create A Legend turn, which asks you to play an Idea, you might say “I think there should be legendary scorpions in this world,” and put down the scorpions card.
A “pointer” serves as both nametag, to cover parts of the card that aren’t relevant, and to see when every player has taken their turn.
In response, each other player will propose a possible modifier to your idea (again, guided by the current turn type). For Create a Legend the response category is Quality. One player might propose crimson: “I think these scorpions are huge and made of red gemstones. It sounds like a tinkling chandelier when they’re approaching.” Others might respond with:
elegant: “The scorpions are sort of angelic, graceful. Even a glance of them brings a tear to your eye.”
wind-up: “They’re mechanical scorpions created by some mad inventor long ago to patrol the lands. Legends say one day they will wind down and their reign of terror will end.”
riddle: “The Riddle Scorpions hide where you least expect them and paralyze you with quick strikes. If you can answer their riddle, they’ll let you go, but otherwise…”
A round of played cards, with the Downcrawl Deck in the center of the table.
The current player (who proposed scorpions) then says the phrase: “These are all great stories, but the truth is…” and picks one of these proposals. “The truth is they are wind-up scorpions. Great beasts of metal that are slow, but ruthless in their pursuit of any who try to wander freely. They seem to regard nearly any sentient creatures as enemies.” They take the card they selected and align it with their own:
Finally, they choose a turn type for the player on their left to play. “Elena, let’s Find a New Volume next…” thus beginning the next turn.
As you play, you record each idea on an Index (an index card). Some turn types propose new ideas, others continue to develop existing ideas (“let’s find out more about those wind-up scorpions…”) letting you add more info to an existing Index. You can reposition Indexes at will, picking them up to refresh your memory or clustering related elements together.
When you’ve built up and developed enough Indexes of the right types, you unlock Story Turns, which let you use these elements to tell different kinds of stories. For instance, in the Historic Summit story turn, you’ll discover what happens when two Folk (the peoples of your Down) come together. Other story turns explore strange goings-on in a particular Volume (a location in your Down), or create a hero and send them on an epic quest to confront the Legend of the Age.
Some Indexes for a Downcrawl Worlds playtest. One can always do with more heartless, unalive Shrimp Wraiths.
I’ve been playtesting Downcrawl Worlds extensively over the last few months (I’m on Draft 11 of the rules!), and can objectively say it’s always a ton of fun. (And has helped me iterate on the card design much more quickly.) It’s a great way to spend a couple of hours with a table of creative friends, or even friends who might just need a bit of prodding from the card prompts to bring their latent creativity out. Last weekend I ran a few games at the KublaCon Fall convention in San Jose, California, with players including young teenagers, hardcore D&D purists, and an elderly boardgamer all enjoying themselves immensely.
Downcrawl Worlds is a standalone game, but intersects with core Downcrawl in a couple fun ways:
You can use Worlds to build a Deep, Deep Down for your main Downcrawl game: Indexes become the main game’s Map and Folk Decks, and everything you create aligns nicely with what you’ll need for campaign play.
Like the main game, you can play Worlds with a group (up to 6 players) or solo (with variant rules for a 2-player game).
Also like the main game, Worlds can work with any combination of Downcrawl Decks: if you have the Even Deeper Deck (with slightly stranger prompts), you can use it alone, shuffle it together with the main deck, even remove cards with prompts you don’t like: the game will play just fine with any combination of cards.
You’ll get a PDF of the Downcrawl Worlds rules for free if you back the crowdfunding campaign at any level that includes a Downcrawl card deck! I didn’t foresee this fun little game existing during the initial design of 2E, but I’m so glad it’s come into being… it’s another lovely way to bring the magic of creating a curious underworld together to your table.
That's it for now! You'll probably hear from me a couple more times this week as I beat the drum for the final days of the campaign. I'll keep folks posted with regular updates once the campaign ends as we move forward towards the fulfillment stage, which I'm planning for early next year. Thanks for everything and take care,
